In many ways it’s a great time to be an economic educator. Almost everyone’s interested in the economy. People always are asking my opinion of what should be done to make the economy better.

At the same time, there’s intense disagreement about the best economic policies. Conflicting policy prescriptions often are offered by different groups.

I won’t solve these disagreements here. Instead, I’ll review the economic philosophies behind the alternatives and their pros and cons and let you decide which makes the most sense.

There are three major competing ideas about how to handle today’s economy: Keynesianism, monetarism and libertarianism.

Keynesianism, named after the 20th-century English economist John Maynard Keynes, has been the most dominant in the last 80 years. Keynes’ idea was to use government to lean against the direction of the economy. That is, when the economy is growing rapidly and inflation is a threat, government would raise taxes and reduce spending to cool off growth. When the economy is in reverse, lower taxes and more government spending is the cure.

However, critics level two primary complaints against such Keynesian policies. First, they question their effectiveness. Critics contend that funds collected and spent by the government always have alternative uses.

Second, they point out that both parts of the Keynesian program usually aren’t used. While spending increases and tax cuts are popular, the opposite — spending decreases and tax hikes — are harder to pass.

The main contender to Keynesianism is monetarism, whose central premise is that money matters to the direction of the economy. In most modern economies, a country’s central bank — the Federal Reserve in the United States — has substantial control over the amount of money in circulation.

Supporters of active monetarism say in times of recession, the Federal Reserve should pump up the money supply to encourage lending and spending. If the economy is over-heating, it should do the opposite.

But not everyone is sold on this strategy. Simple logic suggests a potential problem: If money is printed at a rate faster than the products and services on which it is spent, prices will rise faster.

Libertarianism is both a political and economic philosophy. It essentially rejects Keynesianism and monetarism as ways to cure the economy, especially during recessions. At best, libertarians say, Keynesianism and monetarism can only give short-run benefits to the economy. Libertarians offer policies such as balanced budgets, simple taxes and fewer regulations.

But libertarians’ opponents say that before Keynesian and monetary policies were used, the economy was marked by horrible recessions that lasted years.

Dr. Mike Walden is a William Neal Reynolds Professor and N.C. Cooperative Extension economist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at N.C. State University.